Bruce Almighty

Wednesday 25 May 2005 23:00 BST

Bruce Springsteen: A man of many faces.

As Bruce Springsteen rolls into town this week to showcase his 19th album Devils And Dust at the Royal ALbert Hall, he explains why, at the age of 55, he is still fascinated by the pursuit of the American Dream

There are many Bruce Springsteens. The multi-platinum singersongwriter who defined blue-collar America with his swashbuckling albums Born To Run and Born In The USA. The family man who, in 1988, traded in model Julianne Phillips for his backing singer Patti Scialfa. The political activist who has toured in support of Amnesty International and campaigned for John Kerry in last year's presidential election. The live powerhouse whose entire British tour comprises two measly dates at the Albert Hall this weekend (mind you, he is playing wholly solo). And the reclusive control freak who would rather undergo major surgery than conduct an interview.

In 2005, though, Springsteen is the quiet soothsayer, singing of 'people whose souls are in danger' and selling out his Dublin show faster than U2. Devils And Dust, his 19th album and sixth British No.1, is a curveball in a career of curveballs. The title track's depiction of an everyman soldier in Iraq is a red herring. The state of the nation address that formed the heart of Devils And Dust's predecessor, The Rising (American popular music's most healing response to 9/11), has been supplanted on Devils And Dust by a collection of mostly crushed characters: ne'er-do-wells and desperadoes struggling away on the margins of mainstream America. Devils And Dust is, reckons Springsteen, the successor to 1995's similarly introspective The Ghost Of Tom Joad.

'For me, it's both personal and political,' Springsteen admits. 'The things I'm interested in remain pretty constant. I'm singing about the same set of ideals: fairness and justice and the idea of creating some place you feel proud to call your home and to bring up your kids in. Most of my characters aren't rebels, they're trying to be included. They just want their little piece of the promise that the world has to offer.'

The album's cast is a rum one indeed. In 'Reno', a weary but seedy little chap visits a prostitute. The song is so explicit that Starbucks backed away from a deal to sell the album along with their coffee. 'I allowed myself a certain directness,' Springsteen, now 55, muses. 'Maybe it comes with age. It's probably a song I wouldn't have written in my twenties or even my thirties. It's part of the fun of being my age. The graphic stuff is there because I needed a real description of the physical experience.'

More emotionally affecting are the teenage son mourning his recently deceased mother in 'Silver Palomino' and 'Matamoros Banks', a saga of the Mexican wetbacks who seek a better life across the border. As those characters change, so does Springsteen's voice. 'You're always searching for the voice that makes the song come to life,' he explains. 'You're also trying to meld your voice into the voice of the person you're writing about, who's always half you. That's how you declare your solidarity and respect with and for them: by disappearing as much as you can into them.'

Springsteen's support for the underdog was inculcated throughout his childhood. New Jersey is nicknamed the Garden State, but it remains one of America's most down-atheel enclaves. Douglas Springsteen, Bruce's Dutch-American father, worked as a bus driver, a prison guard and a millworker, but was mostly unemployed.

'This album goes back to my childhood experiences,' explains Bruce. 'There was a lot of invisibility and my recollection of it was painful. I experienced it through my father's life as he had struggled with that terribly. And if you're a child watching it, you feel its effects so directly, and it's a traumatic event for a household. You carry it with you. The connection I have to many of the characters on the album is understanding what it feels like to be invisible: once you've experienced it you never forget. My whole life was this enormous effort to become visible, to have some impact and to reach people and be reached by the world that's around me.'

After yet another period of unemployment, Douglas Springsteen, his Italian-American wife Adele and their daughter Pamela left their East Coast home in Freehold for the sunny delights of California. Nineteen-year-old Bruce, already a veteran of several New Jersey bands, stayed behind with his older sister, Ginny.

'I could make a living in New Jersey, and I wanted to be independent,' he remembers. 'They went to start a new life. At first, they'd sleep two nights in the car and one in a motel. My dad changed a lot. He made a tremendous effort to get his life straight. When I went to see my folks once a year, I had to drive. I didn't go on an airplane until I had a record contract and they flew me to Los Angeles. So I drove across America. It felt like a different country. I got interested in the story of the West. Things going on in California seemed like the frontier of what the country was turning into.'

Those long, youthful treks give Devils And Dust its feel of the Midwest and the Dust Bowl rather than Springsteen's usual New Jersey backdrop. When Springsteen rolls into town next week with just his trusty guitar, his mouth organ and occasional piano and banjo for company, he will concentrate on Devils And Dust, The Ghost Of Tom Joad and the similar-sounding Nebraska, rather than reworkings of older, more breast-beating material - curiously, Born In The USA makes quite an acoustic lament. Springsteen, however, is highly unlikely to play it.

More surprisingly, the gruff-voiced balladeer has promised to unveil his falsetto on 'Maria's Bed' and 'All I'm Thinkin' About' during the show. 'I'm getting more confident with it,' he chuckles. 'Plus, it's something people don't expect. I like to surprise people.'